“Ekaette! Eka…..where is that girl sef?”

My ten year old son peered at me over his handheld game.

“Hmmm, if you’re planning to give her those clothes to wash, I guess you’re intending never to wear them again. Who knows, this time she might wash them in engine oil!”

I looked at the clothes in my hands. He had a point. A good point. In fact, a very good point. The clothes included the white shirts I wore with suits to work during the week and a pair of purple colour-fast shirts that had been distributed to volunteer mothers at Church in preparation for the oncoming children’s week. If I asked Ekaette to wash them, I would probably end up with twelve purple or lilac coloured shirts that were once white.

“Madam”, the tiny, wiry girl appeared in the doorway, wiping her wet hands on her skirt. A skirt I had bought the previous week for goodness sakes!

“What are you doing?” I asked, choosing to ignore the now well stained, bright yellow skirt. How many times had I told her to use an apron? I might as well have been talking to a rock, anyways.

“I dey wash plate for kitchen ma.” She responded, my eyes still managing to catch the wet hands as they left tracks on the skirt I had bought for three thousand naira.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I had to. I lived with the secret fear that one day, she would set fire to the house and not even know it. And my son seemed to read my mind.

“Yes ma,” she replied.

“Don’t worry mum,” Daniel, my son said. “I don’t smell smoke. The house is not yet on fire.”

Well, at any rate, I knew that washing the dishes was one of the few things she could do competently without causing a small catastrophe. Still, I made a mental note to make sure she had been washing the dishes with the liquid detergent and not kerosene. Goodness knows they looked similar and in Ekaette’s mind, similar meant no difference.

“Anyway, don’t worry,” I said, dismissing her for the good of my white shirts. “You can go back to the kitchen.”

With a “yes ma” and a curtsy, she swept away back to the kitchen.

“Hmmm,” muttered Daniel, getting up from where he was seated. “I’d better follow her to make sure she isn’t drying those plates with my towel or washing the fish again.”

And for good reason too. Ekaette’s stay with us had lasted slightly over a month so far and had been one hell of a ride, from inducing heart wrenching frustration to causing rib cracking laughter, this girl’s presence in our house had become quite something. Even visitors to the house had taken to asking after “that funny, tiny girl in your house” after just one encounter with Ekaette, especially Sola, my colleague from work into whose tea Ekaette had poured salt instead of sugar when she had come visiting. I must admit in retrospect that seeing Sola gag after swallowing a mouthful of salted tea was priceless. And the event had quite endeared the crazy girl to Sola.

Normally, I would have preferred to stay without a house help (and till her arrival slightly over a month ago, I had lived without one for the fifteen years I’ve been married to my husband). However, my mother had come visiting once and I had retailed to her the challenges I was having with to deal with over house work, the kids and my work (my husband was as undemanding as awesome so no problems there). She sat there and nodded her head as mothers always do when they’ve made a decision for you that they had no intention of telling you about. When she came visiting again two weeks later, it was with the small, wiry pack of wahala called Ekaette......CONTINUE READING HERE:- http://proudlynations.com.ng/2016/01/ekaette/